Fairfax artist pays tribute to wild California

When her SECOND child came along, Sawyer Rose did what many new parents do — move from San Francisco to Marin.

She wanted to raise "free-range babies," she says.

What she didn't anticipate was how settling down just a few miles north of her urban home for 11 years would free her art as well.

A Matilija poppy in her Fairfax front yard started it all.

"The flowers are the most magnificent, beautiful flowers. They look like giant fried eggs. So, I took pictures of it, having no real use for it," she says.

But when she did some research about what it was — an endangered California native — Rose started reading up about other natives, especially endangered and threatened ones. That's when she knew exactly what she wanted to do; explore their forms in her textured three-dimensional metal and glass lightboxes.

"They're so diverse and unusual and bold in their form, aesthetically. I thought this was a treasure trove of subjects for my work," she says.

About a dozen of her lightboxes are on display through April at the Marin Headlands Visitors Center in Sausalito. An artist's reception will take place on April 7.

"In my work, both aesthetically and in terms of subject matter, I feel it's important for my work to be useful," says Rose, who uses tiny LED lights to illuminate the boxes from within.

"I thought her artwork was interesting and dynamic and related to nature and it was unique; it wasn't just straight painting," says Kathryn Hyde, the volunteer curator for the Marin Headlands Visitors Center's Greening Gallery for the past four years.

Her series on California natives, which now include trees, birds and butterflies, are a far cry from the artwork she created in San Francisco.

Although she often incorporated shapes in her 3-D pieces, her lightboxes had a decidedly urban look to them.

"My subject matter was much more graphic and less organic," says Rose, 39, who is also a graphic artist. "Once I started doing the California plants, I felt like that was better match for the medium."

Her work is still bold, she notes, but that's because some of the natives themselves are outrageously brash.

Part of her lightboxes' uniqueness came quite accidentally, when she discovered she was "very bad at soldering," she says, laughing.

But her blobby soldering lines actually looked pretty cool.

"I thought that looks so wonderful, I'm going to keep it. I'm going to work with it and see if I can learn to control it, which I did," she says.

While Rose uses stained-glass techniques, she doesn't use stained glass.

"I feel a little like it's cheating. I want everything to be made by my hand," she says.

Instead, she paints India ink on layers of specially treated Mylar, and layers them behind the glass.

"It gives more of an illusion of depth to have it in layers," she observes.

And Rose admittedly loves layers.

"I find that I'm compelled to add more. I can hardly help myself," she says with a laugh. "I'll be painting a painting and say, 'Yeah, this is great but what if I build up this corner, what if sculpted this and incorporated this?"

Rose sees her lightboxes, which sell for $500 to $1,500 and are carried in the Mine Gallery in Fairfax and elsewhere, as a tribute to the grandeur of wild California and its more than 5,800 native species.

To keep it that way for her children, now 3 and 5½ years old, she donates 5 percent of sales of lightboxes featuring threatened or endangered species to the California Native Plant Society, about $200 so far.

"It's a little unfair for me to use an image of something that's so startling and not do anything to help it, other than raise the awareness," she says.

Vicki Larson can be reached at vlarson@marinij.com; follow her on Twitter at @OMGchronicles, fan her on Facebook at Vicki-Larson-OMG-Chronicles